MINNEAPOLIS — For so many games this season, they’ve watched their pitchers make their minimal run support stand up with their sheer dominance on the mound.
Roughly 24 hours earlier, they looked feckless and overmatched in what of their worst performances of the season, being held to one run on three hits while striking out 14 times.
But in a game where the starting pitcher didn’t provide a quality start and the bullpen didn’t dominate, the Mariners’ offense — that much-maligned group of largely underachieving hitters — was the sole reason for Seattle’s 10-6 victory over the Minnesota Twins.
Ten runs? From the Mariners?
Indeed, for the second time this season, Seattle reached double figures in runs scored.
“We’ve been kind of waiting for this game to come,” manager Scott Servais said. “At some point, you’re going to have to find a way to score a bunch of runs to pick up your pitching and we did that tonight.”
But it was how the Mariners scored the bulk of their runs — eight runs over the final three innings — that was most impressive and meaningful.
It started with more late-inning heroics from a player who was scheduled for a sort-of day off.
Cal Raleigh rarely gets a full day off from baseball unless there isn’t a game.
When the Mariners’ starting lineup for Tuesday’s game at Target Field was released early in the afternoon, Raleigh was not in it.
It’s happened only a few times this season.
But neither Raleigh nor Servais expected it to be an evening of rest for the Mariners starting catcher.
“He will probably end up in the game tonight,” Servais said pregame.
He did more than just appear in the game.
Down 4-2 and looking listless at the plate for the previous four innings, the Mariners managed to load the bases against Twins reliever Jay Jackson with one out.
Servais couldn’t call on Raleigh fast enough to pinch hit for backup catcher Seby Zavala.
“If you’re down in the game or the game is close, he’s just got a way about him late in the game,” Servais said. “He has really good at-bats. Now, he doesn’t always come through, but when he does, he usually comes through in a big way.”
Following the scouting reports, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli brought in lefty Steven Okert to force the switch-hitting Raleigh to bat from the right side, which is supposedly his less successful side.
Those reports should and that strategy may need to change.
Raleigh worked a full count and smashed 3-2 slider from Okert into the upper deck in left field for the fourth pinch-hit grand slam in Mariners history. It was his fourth pinch-hit homer in his career, which tied him with Ken Phelps for most in team history. More importantly, it also gave Seattle a 6-4 lead
“We knew he liked to spin the ball,” Raleigh said. “For me, I’m just trying to keep it slow and trying to see it up and trying to hit the ball the other way. I just happened to pull it, but good things happen when you think the other way.”
The ball had 110-mph exit velocity and traveled 445 feet. Raleigh’s previous homer came off Astros lefty closer Josh Hader in a late-game situation. He is the only player in MLB this season with three go-ahead homers in the seventh inning or later.
It was Raleigh’s fifth homer batting right-handed, which is supposedly his weaker side.
“They’ll still turn them around and that’s OK,” Servais said. “He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what side of the plate he’s on as long as he gets a good pitch to hit. And that’s what he’s doing really well right now. He’s working his way through counts and at-bats and getting a pitch that he can handle and doing some serious damage with it.”
But the Mariners bullpen couldn’t capitalize on Raleigh’s late-inning heroics and hold the two-run lead.
Tyson Miller gave up a run in the bottom of the seventh. Seattle then lost the lead and a valuable reliever in the eighth inning.
With one out and Max Kepler on second following a leadoff double, lefty Tayler Saucedo got pinch-hitter Austin Martin to hit a ground ball to the right side. Ty France fielded the ball well away from first and flipped the ball to Saucedo as he was running to cover the bag. Knowing it would be close, Martin made a headfirst dive for the bag while Saucedo made an awkward attempt to step on the bag and avoid him. It left him writhing in pain on the ground.
Seeing that everyone was looking at the injured Saucedo, who had dropped the ball out of his glove, and time had not been called by first base umpire David Rackley, Twins third base coach Tommy Watkins sent Kepler home to tie the game.
“So, I didn’t even really see that the ball was loose,” Kepler told Twins reporters. “And I just heard Tommy behind me going, ‘Go, go, go, go!’ In a situation like that, I know the ball is live. Obviously, I feel like the midst of it, it’s kind of a (expletive) move to go when a guy is down and hurt, so I hope that whatever happened to Saucedo, he’s not doing too poorly and he recovers well.”
Saucedo had to be helped off the field by the athletic training staff.
“He’s going to be out for a while,” Servais said. “A little bit of a knee issue there. We’ll get some imaging on that, but we’re gonna miss him. Sauce has been so valuable for us in that left-handed utility role and his personality on top of it. We’ll have to make a few roster moves.”
Perhaps the baseball karma gods took a disliking to Kepler’s heads-up play because Seattle reeled off four runs in the top of the ninth inning as the Twins imploded.
Dylan Moore led off with a triple off the wall in left field. He later scored the eventual winning run on Josh Rojas’ single. But Seattle wasn’t done, adding more than a few insurance runs. With the bases loaded and no outs, Mitch Haniger drove in a run with a sac fly to push the lead to two runs. Rojas made a good read and hustled home to score on a wild pitch and France added an RBI single.
The offense had picked up the pitching staff.
“It’s huge,” Moore said. “We know that we can do it. And we never really gave up. We had some really good ABs at the end. I thought it was great that we just kept going.”
In what will likely be his last MLB start for the foreseeable future, Emerson Hancock gave the Mariners an uneven outing. He battled to make it through four innings, allowing four runs on four hits with two walks and no strikeouts.
Over his last two outings, which included a loss to the Braves where he failed to go four innings, Hancock pitched a combined 7 2/3 innings with nine runs allowed (six earned) on nine hits with six walks and four strikeouts.
His teammates gave him a 2-0 lead in the second inning. Haniger led off with a solo homer into the upper deck of left field and Moore came up with a two-out double to score Luis Urias.
But the Twins answered in the bottom of the third, scoring four runs all with two outs as Hancock allowed a single, walked a batter, gave up an RBI double to Trevor Larnach and then served up a three-run homer to Ryan Jeffers.
With right-hander Bryan Woo ready to return from the injured list, the Mariners are expected to option Hancock to Triple-A Tacoma in the coming days and reinsert Woo into the starting rotation.
Mariners pinch hit grand slams
- Ben Broussard, 4/21/2007
- Franklin Gutierrez, 7/21/2015
- Daniel Vogelbach, 9/17/2018
- Cal Raleigh, 5/7/2024